For me, Foundation by Isaac Asimov is one of the great all-time scifi classics. It takes a concept so simple you can’t help but say “huh, I wish I thought of that” and pulls it off beautifully. It’s a book that changes the way you look at the world, for the better. Don’t believe me? Well I don’t care, but maybe you should read the following half-baked set of brain-drool I’m going to call a thread.

Geeks Versus Bullies

At its heart, Foundation is a metaphor for the collapse of the Roman Empire and the following spread of Christianity, only a thousand times more awesome because it invokes destiny and has spaceships. Which is entirely incorrect though, since it is actually a classic story of a high school geek surrounded by bullies.

Bonfires in Autumn have been around for centuries, but 5th November has an extra special meaning for those in Britain. Guy Fawkes Night is seen as one groups attempt to blow up Parliament and so restore power to the King. I always wondered when people celebrated it, were they celebrating the prevention of such an action or that someone went ahead and tried it anyway.

It's weird that its also named after the person who was caught in the act who happened to be a Spanish mercenary. He wasn't really in it for the ideals but the money. And still he gets lauded as some kind of anti-establishment figure. Amusing since Spain and England were not exactly friendly at that point. His likeness is now copied by a multitude of people thanks to "V for Vendetta", but I wonder how many of them know the backstory.

The Foregone Conclusion was, technically, part of human-controlled space. Though the formal boundaries of the Human Domain were blurred, subjective and always changing, the ship was well beyond the outermost worlds that any reasonable person would call human, and yet it was built by humans, and so considered their territory. A drifting bubble of legal convenience amid a void of anarchy.